Even though you and me would know this man was a real danger, the law—in its typical woman-despising manner—told her he had done not much illegal. … Made the stalker write a letter apologizing.

What on earth do I have to do to get the future justice-servers of my culture to be better freaking people?

I wish I knew what I could do to make the maximum impact possible on boys and girls before they become administrators and judges.

my friend says that true power is when you help someone else get to where you are and go beyond you and even then you are happy for them.

**sigh** Another apt, conscious description of something I subconsciously believe is true, against the worries and words of my mother and many of my friends. (“Why should you work in the world to have things taken away from you??!!”)

Why can so few people I’ve loved, through my life, see it the way I see it? That my dream is to stay somewhere appxroximately where I am (in terms of risk to my safety in life and the risk to my health in life) and help others surpass me? That I see it as standing still and dropping in relative place to the back of the pack because I’m happy where I am in an absolute sense, not being shoved to the back of the pack?

And it did help me re-align my sexual violence beliefs to be closer to the truth.

My little sister’s going to her first humongous city where she won’t have her own car w/ her. (Chicago’s her only other big city where street harassment is so prevalent that she might have been likely to encounter it in a short trip.) And what’s more, she won’t speak a single language that even comes close to the language in this city where she’ll be for 3 weeks.

Everybody was worried sick about her but me. I think I already had a hunch that the chances of anything bad happening to her were extremely low compared to the chances most women in the world face. Higher than they are in her current life, since she’ll be in a humongous city where street harassment is prevalent and she’ll be at the mercy of whoever lives in the home of her host family for the trip, and she won’t speak the language. But lower than they are for most women in the world by a long shot, nonetheless.

Anyway, I was working myself up to the worry level of everyone else in my family the more I heard them worry. Thinking, “Shoot, how can I teach her as much as I know about how to deal w/ violent people before she goes w/o making her life and her experience there worse?”

Of course, if there’s time when we’re together before then, I will try to teach her a thing or two I know about how to deal with violent people.

But the amount I feel pressure to fit in is lower, and the amount of pressure I feel to fit it in is lower.

I do, tonight, finally have conscious explanations for my subconscious feeling that she was highly likely to be all right.

It’s because she will still be traveling in a way that affords her a far less risky walk through the world than the majority of women in the world. And that’s something I need to keep in mind. Something I always hope to keep in mind. Something I’m glad came to mind, because that level of risk for “the majority of women in the world” needs to fucking change.

but i do appreciate what you are telling me.

Thank you so much, I take all of your comments deep into consideration for my future actions and writing.

I think it is incredibly important that you write, and that you are angry, and that you care.

Something you said in a comment up thread struck me kind of funny, though. When you said, “this is not about the individual women i talk of…i just speak of them as symbols of what all women live with, or what i see women living with.” My first response was, “but well, it is about these specific women. They live with these traumas, violations, betrayals, and pain every day. It’s always personal, and specific, for these women.”

The intention I read in your comment was that it’s not just the women you mentioned. That men’s violence against women, rape, and sexual assault are issues for EVERY woman, but the experiences of the women that you love can’t be broken up and doled out to all women everywhere to dull the pain. All women are impacted by every act of brutalization, it reinforces the fear we must constantly live with, but the sharing of the pain doesn’t necessarily lessen it for the specific women who have been hurt.

So, no, it’s not just about them. It is about all women, but not in lieu of these women. It is now, and always will be, their experiences, their lives, their pain – them, specifically.

Don’t lose sight of the fact that it is many, many, many individual women who suffer. Not that I think you’d forget, but I do think it bears repeating.

thank you.

We live and breathe our tears and our struggle. And yet I still get called a bitch and have some little bastard at school (I’m a teacher) tell me to suck his dick. You have to undo the damage one at a time.

This post you wrote…well, you’re my hope. I’ll drag my truths out into the streets if it means unearthing more like you. Whatever thanks you’re getting are deserved.